2: Dorothy balances on a fence rail while the words "Balanced on the biggest wave you race towards an early grave" are sung. Dorothy falls as the words "early grave" are sung. The tempo of the music then changes to work with the movie.

3: When the helicopter noise is heard, Dorothy looks up and pans across the sky as if there really is something going across the sky. Not only does she follow something from right to left but the audio goes from right to left as well.

4: Dorothy opens her mouth in sync with the laughter.

5: The ringing of the alarm bells in "Time" coincides perfectly with the entrance of Elvira Gulch on her bike.

6: "kicking around on a peice of ground in your home town" as Toto escapes from the basket and runs back to the farm. "Waiting for someone or something to show you the way" as Dorothy is in her room wondering what she should do, Toto comes hopping through the window to show her the way.

7: The song fits with the window crashing into Dorothy. The intensity of the song subsides with her falling asleep. The song playing during the entire tornado scene is titled "The Great Gig In The Sky"

8: The ballerinas and munchkins dance in time to the music.

9: Dorothy and the scarecrow's motions are in sync with the music.

10: "The lunatic is on the grass" as the scarecrow does a crazy dance. The song playing is titled "Brain Damage". The scarecrow sings "If I only had a brain" during that part of the movie.

11: The last song on the album concludes with the sound of a heartbeat. You hear this sound as Dorothy and the scarecrow listens for the tinman's heartbeat. *you may need to use headphones for this part*

I was reminded of this today by a piece at Johnny Cat's "Litter Box, " where there are links to two additional non-embeddable videos and some salient discussion of the phenomenon.

An interesting item I recently encountered in the book Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery, by Steve Nicholls (University of Chicago Press, 2009):

“But several islands in the Caribbean had big enough and old enough seabird colonies to have built up thick layers of guano, well worth mining as agriculture in North America spread westward and spilled onto the Great Plains. Just how important guano was before the days of chemical fertilizers was illustrated in 1856, when the United States passed the Guano Islands Act. This allowed any U.S. citizen to claim as U.S. territory an uninhabited guano island anywhere in the world, and it empowered the president to use the U.S. military to defend those claims. In all, more than fifty islands were claimed, and some are still disputed...

Here's the citation from the federal legislation, which to my knowledge has never been remanded:

I coubt there is any land in the world not presently under "the lawful jurisdiction" of any government, so I suppose the Act is irrelevant, but it does demonstrate how empires were built in the old days.

More re the book later. Photo found at Widelec (see watermark), but original source unknown.

With the recent decision that "corporations are people" and can contribute $$$ to political campaigns, it seems appropriate that a bill has now been introduced (by Senator Al Franken, D-MN) to prevent that right from being extended to foreign coporations, or those significantly influenced by foreign interests:

It is common knowledge that China exerts substantial influence worldwide in economic terms. Now the country has announced that it is considering setting up overseas military bases.

Setting up overseas military bases is not an idea we have to shun; on the contrary, it is our right. Bases established by other countries appear to be used to protect their overseas rights and interests. As long as the bases are set up in line with international laws and regulations, they are legal ones. But if the bases are established to harm other countries, their existence becomes illegal and they are likely to be opposed by other countries.

China develops its military force with a theme of peace in mind. Therefore, we can either develop military forces domestically to maintain peace, or place the forces abroad as long as we take world peace as the ultimate goal...

The first overseas location to be established will probably be in Pakistan:

"It is baseless to say that we will not set up any military bases in future because we have never sent troops abroad," an article published on Thursday at a Chinese government website said. "It is our right," the article said and went on to suggest that it would be done in the neighborhood, possibly Pakistan...

In addition to enhancing their ability to monitor and influence Muslim Uigher separatists on the western margins of China, the Pakistani location would also be crucial in protecting China's interest in Middle East oil.

And speaking of empires, while reading recently about the settlement of the Americas, I kept bumping into the Portugese. Their empire was the first to span the globe, and it lasted for over 500 years, longer than that of any other European nation.

The map above entitled "Portugal Is Not a Small Country," was created for internal Portugese reasons, after the loss of Brazil, to show that the remaining hegemony was still substantial.

I have always used "unique" in a binary fashion, defining something that is the only one of its kind. As such I have considered modifying adjectives to be inappropriate. This morning I learn that I am apparently "behind the times." Here's part of the entry at Merriam-Webster online:

1: being the only one : sole 2 a: being without a like or equal : unequaled2 b: distinctively characteristic : peculiar 3: unusual

usage Many commentators have objected to the comparison or modification (as by somewhat or very) of unique, often asserting that a thing is either unique or it is not. Objections are based chiefly on the assumption that unique has but a single absolute sense, an assumption contradicted by information readily available in a dictionary. Unique dates back to the 17th century but was little used until the end of the 18th when, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was reacquired from French. H. J. Todd entered it as a foreign word in his edition (1818) of Johnson's Dictionary, characterizing it as “affected and useless.” Around the middle of the 19th century it ceased to be considered foreign and came into considerable popular use. With popular use came a broadening of application beyond the original two meanings (here numbered 1 and 2a). In modern use both comparison and modification are widespread and standard but are confined to the extended senses 2b and 3. When sense 1 or sense 2a is intended, unique is used without qualifying modifiers.

And I can't resist adding: Q: How do you catch a unique rabbit? A: Unique Up On It. And - Q: How Do You Catch A Tame Rabbit? A: Tame Way, Unique Up On It.

29 January 2010

This week Jeopardy! held online tryouts for future contestants. There were three different quizzes of 50 questions each, on three nights this week.

Those who took the test (and others) may be interested in seeing the answers, which were not provided at the time. All of the questions and answers are accessible via forums at the Jeopardy! website, and perhaps more conveniently at the Penultimate Life blog.

Passenger pigeons traveled in flocks of hundreds of millions, so thick that their passing eclipsed the sun. They descended en masse at the locations of nut and fruit trees. Audubon passed a roost site along the Green River in Kentucky: “I rode through it upwards of forty miles, and, crossing it in different parts, found its average breadth to be rather more than three miles… the dung lay several inches deep, covering the whole extent of the roosting place…The Pigeons, arriving by the thousands, alighted everywhere, one above another, until solid masses were formed on the branches all around. Here and there perches gave way under the weight with a crash, and, falling to the ground, destroyed hundred of birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick was loaded. It was a scene of uproar and confusion. I found it quite useless to speak, or even to shout to those persons who were nearest to me.”

“Audobon... came up with a figure of over 1 billion birds in a single flock that he watched near Louisville, Kentucky. A flock in Ontario thirty years later took several days to pass and was later estimated to contain nearly 4 billion individuals.”

The longest recorded nesting site was in central Wisconsin. In 1872 it formed an L shape, the long arm 75 miles long and the short one 50 miles long, with arm widths between six and eight miles.

The birds were destroyed with guns, clubs, and burning pots of sulphur.

It was made to flap its wings to attract the attention of a passing flock, and it was quite usual for each trapper to catch upward of five hundred birds in each release of the net and maybe five thousand birds in a day’s work.

(Notes and quotes from the book Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery, by Steve Nicholls (University of Chicago Press, 2009). More re the book in the days to come.

According to Cosmopolitan magazine, whale tails are now a thing of the past, replaced by "boy shorts." Salon columnist Sarah Hepola is not disappointed:

"...for many of us, the thong was an epic fail -- neither flattering nor comfortable, a permanent wedgie at premium prices...instead of something worn occasionally, the thong became something to wear all the time, every day...

Congressman Steve Buyer (R-Indiana) set up the Frontier Foundation seven years ago "with the intention of handing out scholarships once the fund reached $100,000." The Foundation has now raised $880,000, including $200,000 from The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), big pharma’s main lobby. The foundation has not yet given out a single dollar to a student for scholarships, but the funds have been used to hire friends and family members as employees, and to fund golfing trips.

"Reprehensibly, Rep. Buyer appears to have been using Frontier fundraisers to play golf at exclusive domestic and foreign resorts to avoid paying for his own travel, meals, lodging, and greens fees, all on the backs of Indiana's underprivileged students," said CREW's complaint.

In fact, six years after the Frontier Foundation started, it's collected more than $800,000. Yet it hasn't spent a penny on scholarships.

It can be difficult to know where Buyer's re-election campaign ends and his Frontier Foundation begins. His campaign and Foundation shared office space. Until August, his campaign manager also ran his Foundation - inviting select donors to golf outings with Buyer at posh resorts.

When nobody from the Frontier Foundation returned our calls, we went to the address listed on their tax forms in Monticello, Indiana and found an empty office.

There is now a report that the congressman will retire - not now, but at the end of his term.

What makes me mad is not just the congressman's alleged activity, but the apparent inaction of Congress to investigate and discipline him. An inquiry as to whether these charges are true or not shouldn't require two months from when it became public news; it could be accomplished in two weeks - probably in two days. Just have an accountant review the books of the foundation. If he were my employee and guilty as charged, I would kick him out now and require repayment of every damn penny, with interest.

In December 2007, John Kiriakou told ABC News' Brian Ross in a televised and widely publicized interview that "senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water." Now he admits he was lying.

The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou's claim.

"It works, is the bottom line," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the day after Kiriakou's ABC interview. "Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works."

A cascade of similar acclamations followed, muffling -- to this day -- the later revelation that Zubaydah had in fact been waterboarded at least 83 times...

"What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts," he writes. "I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence."

"Now we know," Kiriakou goes on, "that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied."

It will be interesting to see the coverage this gets in the major media compared to the coverage they gave his original allegation.

28 January 2010

I found the photo above while searching for something totally unrelated. Unfortunately the accompanying text at the link is in ?Romanian. All I can discern is the place names of Mindanao and the Philippines, and some words that look like "modify" and "rudimentary instruments." A TinEye reverse-image-search doesn't help, and Babelfish doesn't offer a Romanian-to-English option. And I can't find anything relevant with the googling.

The lady's lower teeth look to be intact, and black probably from betel juice. But the upper ones are incredibly carved. I've seen photos of modern dental modification in which the teeth are abraded into saw-like points, but this lady's dental work is the most elaborate I've ever seen.

TYWKIWDBI gets a couple thousand visitors a year from the Philippines, a couple hundred of whom log on from Mindanao, so perhaps some reader will recognize this process. Or perhaps there's an academic dentist out there. If anyone has information (or a link?) that would help explain this photo, please leave a comment.

Addendum: It never takes long on this blog for someone to come up with answers to the most arcane questions. Conor found a Google translation of the page in question, and Mlle Titam found this explanatory video:

Update: I've just watched the movie. The clip above is quite representative. If you like the clip, you'll like the movie (and vice versa). Mostly it's views of the burning oil fields, but there is one heart-rending segment of a mother being interviewed re the war and saying -

"Even the tears were black. When my child wept his tears were black."

After that the soldiers stomped on the child's head, and he hasn't spoken since then. Her comments refer to the environmental Armageddon they lived through.

Most of the blogs I have recommended have been "accumulators," typically without a single theme. Moqo-Moqo is also an accumulator - of photographs. I particularly like the fact that Moqo-Moqo is themed to the biological diversity of the natural world. In recent years he/she seems to have added a bit of commentary or identification of the subject, but for the most part the emphasis is on the visual image.

Another reason I'm offering a recommendation is that unlike many (?most) other photoaccumulators, this one makes a reasonable effort to give credit to the source of the photo, either via text or via a link embedded in the photo. Sometimes, as with the indigo bunting above, the link goes to the photo itself; other times (and less optimally) it goes to a Flickr photostream's front page or to another accumulator. But at least the effort and courtesy is made.

Whenever TYWKIWDBI starts becoming dreary from a run of posts about business, politics, ethics, crime etc, I can always lighten the mood with some nature photos from Moqo-Moqo. If you like that subject matter, give it a browse at the link.

I think anyone with even a modicum of interest in history should read an account of Napoleon's disastrous 1812 campaign against the Russians. I recently finished The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon’s Greatest Army by Stephan Talty (Crown Publishers, New York, 2009). It provides a detailed account of the military campaign, with a special emphasis on the role played by typhus in decimating Napoleon's forces. Here are some notes and excerpts:

As he headed east, Napoleon’s army was the size of a city; between 550,000 and 600,000 soldiers crossed entered Russian territory, accompanied by 50,000 wives, whores and attendants, the horde was more than lived in the entire city of Paris. It was in effect the fifth-largest city in the world at the time, guided by a masterful administration that could move messages at 120 mph (via semaphore).

But they weren't very tall. Napoleon's Imperial Guard of 50,000 men were hand-picked "immortals" who met the criteria of being able to read and write and standing over 5'6" tall (most Frenchmen at the time were closer to 5' tall).

Napoleon had prior experience with typhus with his armies. During his wars in Spain 300,000 of his men died of disease while only 100,000 died in battle. As this army entered Poland 60,000 were sick and 30,000 had already died. When they reached Vilna, Napoleon was losing 4000-6000 soldiers a day.

The Russians experienced similar problems: "Russian Colonel Ludwig von Wolzogen met a lieutenant resting with 30 to 40 men behind the front line and ordered him to rejoin his regiment. “This is my regiment!” the man cried. He had lost approximately 1,250 men."

After the army entered Moscow, Russian arsonists torched the wooden city while the French army pillaged it:

“Thousands of men prowled the streets brandishing Turkish scimitars inside their leather belts or sporting enormous fur hats or bits of Tartar costume. Great heaps of swag made their appearance: a jewel-encrusted spittoon from a prince’s palace, silver candlesticks and icons from the local churches, silk Persian shawls threaded with gold, bracelets thick with emeralds and diamonds, enormous rugs and even embroidered armchairs from the finest salons…”

During the retreat, the ditches along the road were filled with this booty:

Along the road one saw silver candelabra, gold crucifixes, the Complete Works of Voltaire bound in Moroccan leather, wall hangings laced with silver thread, “cases filled with diamonds or rolls of ducats.”

And they ate anything in their path - dogs, bears, leather, and corpses.

The men ate their own fingers that had been amputated because of frostbite, and drank their own blood…”

The final numbers for the campaign of 1812: Total dead conservatively 400K. Fewer than a quarter died of enemy action; the majority died of disease, cold, hunger, and thirst. The Imperial Guard returned with only 1500 of its original 47,000 members. The losses were magnified by the small populations of the time – a Polish loss of 75,000 then would be equivalent to 750,000 now. The Russian losses were also heavy – total dead during the war easily over 1 million.

The embedded image is Minard's famous graphic of the size of Napoleon's army during the approach to, and retreat from, Moscow; it also depicts the route and the temperatures encountered. Click the image to examine in more detail.

27 January 2010

Born in Canada, rose to superstardom in the glory days of early cinema. Smart enough to demand not just a salary ($675K in 1918 = $10 million today), but a percentage (to 50%!) of the profits of her films. Co-founded United Artists film studio.

From this studio portrait, it's easy to see why she was called the "Girl with the curls."

It was called the "Zanclean flood" because it occurred during that time interval about 5 million years ago. The waters of the Atlantic ocean broke through the land barrier that joined Gibraltar to Africa, spilling into what at the time was the "Mediterranean desert" (see this link on the Messinian salinity crisis).

Last month the BBC reported some new research into the event.

Using existing borehole and seismic data, his team showed how the flood would have begun with water spilling over a sill. The water would have gradually eroded a channel into the strait, eventually triggering a catastrophic flood, Dr Garcia-Castellanos explained.

And one related interesting item. Someone has proposed reestablishing that land bridge between Gibraltar and Africa, letting the level of the Mediterranean fall, and then letting the water back in through an enormous dam that would create gazillions of megawatts of electricity. It would create a lot of new land (but it would trash some famous beaches - and Venice). Read about it here.

I really admire Glenn Greenwald's writings for Salon. They are among the few op-ed columns that I review on a regular basis, because he isn't afraid to ask challenging questions. He did it when the Bush administration was in power, and he continues to do so with Obama in charge. The most recent column is headed by the in-your-face title "Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens."

My post of the graphic of programming on The History Channel received a vigorous response, so I thought it appropriate to follow up with this news about the Science Channel:

SILVER SPRING, MD—Frustrated by continued demands from viewers for more awesome and extreme programming, Science Channel president Clark Bunting told reporters Tuesday that his cable network was "completely incapable" of watering down science any further than it already had...

"Look, we've tried, we really have, but it's simply not possible to set the bar any lower," said a visibly exhausted Bunting, adding that he "could not in good conscience" make science any more mindless or insultingly juvenile...

"I don't like it when the science people talk about things no one can even understand," said Rich Parker, an Ohio resident. "It's like, just quit your yapping and dip the chain saw into the liquid nitrogen already."

26 January 2010

Bannerman Castle is one of very few actual castles in the United States. Located on Pollapel Island in the Hudson River north of New York, it was built a century ago and eventually used as a military suplus warehouse. It is now abandoned and deteriorating.

We told you card companies can't hike your rates on existing balances. That's true as long as you have a fixed-rate card instead of a variable rate card... This is the reason why card issuers have been switching people to variable-rate cards as fast as they can print out and mail the notices.

Every profession has incompetent personnel - doctors, lawyers, airplane pilots, accountants, etc. Last month an article published at Propublica and at The Los Angeles, and reposted by Mother Jones, raised a question as to whether there are in inordinate numbe of incompetent temporary nurses:

Firms that supply temporary nurses to the nation's hospitals are taking perilous shortcuts in their screening and supervision... Emboldened by a chronic nursing shortage and scant regulation, the firms vie for their share of a free-wheeling, $4-billion industry. Some have become havens for nurses who hopscotch from place to place to avoid the consequences of their misconduct...

Many agencies allow applicants to take competency tests online. Testifying in a malpractice lawsuit earlier this year, an official at Fastaff, a large traveling-nurse firm based in Colorado, said applicants have been hired without even a phone interview...

Much, much more at the link. My mom was a nurse, so I would never diss the profession in general, but I would encourage people to be aware of the potential problems with temporary personnel.

Several weeks ago I featured a Monarch butterfly dress. The ?cape pictured in the drawing above appears to be more moth-like. I presume it was designed to be worn while flitting about under the nighttime street lights of Paris.

Found at Vintage Blog, where there's lots of interesting photos and artwork.

The two newly-hatched monarchs on my fingers above nectared in our yard for a while after release last summer, then eventually headed toward Mexico. It has always been taken for granted that butterflies use solar orientation for navigation. Now some recent research indicates that they, like birds, may also incorporate a system of geomagnetic detection:

The research team used fruit flies engineered to lack their own Cryptochrome (Cry1) molecule, a UV/blue-light photoreceptor already known to be involved in the insects' light-dependent magnetic sense. By inserting into those deficient flies butterfly Cry1... the researchers found that either form can restore... magnetic sense in a light-dependent manner, illustrating a role for both Cry types in magnetoreception.

The research is described in their paper, "Animal cryptochromes mediate magnetoreception by an unconventional photochemical mechanism," posted on-line in the journal Nature on January 24.

The low-level radioactivity of tritium can be converted into fluorescent light energy ("litroenergy") by bringing it into contact with phosphorus. By encapsulating both components inside microspheres, a Wisconsin company is developing glow-in-the-dark paints.

The MPK packaging of tritium into microspheres that have a 5,000-pound crush resistance, makes this technology safe. In the case of release into the air, it essentially is released as hydrogen. The "soft" radioactive emissions from the tritium do not penetrate through the walls of the microsphere encapsulation... The cost to light up 8½ x 11 piece of plastic... with Litrospheres is about 35 cents.

Another company is using similar technology to produce luminescent lighting strips:

The Lunabright products activate after a few minutes' exposure to daylight or artificial light, then continue to glow for several hours. The presumed use would be for safety- and security-related applications.

I'm not pimping either of the products or the companies - just thought the new technologies are kind of cool.

Greenland is of course an island, but was considered by the Vikings to be a huge peninsula of a contiguous northern mainland, that continued to America, where are noted Helleland, Markland and Skraelingeland (after the Viking name for the natives). Marked vertically on the map’s southwestern edge is the name Promontorium Winlandiae (Promontory of Vinland)...

Text and image (click to enlarge) from the always-interesting Strange Maps.

Kelly, of course, was the biological weapons expert whose unexpected death was ruled a suicide.

Broucher had asked Kelly what would happen if Iraq were invaded, and Kelly had replied, "I will probably be found dead in the woods."

Doubts have been raised as to whether the cutting of the ulnar artery, outdoors on a cold night, could have lead to his death, especially since there was little blood at the scene, and the knife found by his body had no fingerprints on it.

The normal rules on post-mortems allow close relatives and ‘properly interested persons’ to apply to see a copy of the report and to ‘inspect’ other documents. Lord Hutton’s measure has overridden these rules, so the files will not be opened until all such people are likely to be dead.

Last night, the Ministry of Justice was unable to explain the legal basis for Lord Hutton’s order.

Smells fishy. Anyone who thinks it is the victim's family that is being "protected" is, I think, highly gullible.

(p.s. - did you know the word "gullible" is not in any standard or online dictionary?)

When the tomb was opened in 2008 a lead coffin 70cm long was found inside, bearing an inscription that read: 'The rescued remains of Queen Eadgyth are in this sarcophagus, after the second renovation of this monument in 1510.' The lead box contained the bones of a woman aged in her thirties, wrapped in white silk.

In the 10th century, she was the equivalent of Princess Diana, but I had not heard of her until this morning.

The crumbling remains of Alfred the Great's granddaughter - a Saxon princess who married one of the most powerful men in Europe - have been unearthed more than 1,000 years after her death. The almost intact bones of Queen Eadgyth - the early English form of Edith - were discovered wrapped in silk, inside a lead coffin in a German cathedral.

More details and pictures at the link. Posted for my mom, for whom this queen is a namesake. There have been very few famous Ediths (Roosevelt, Piaf, Wharton, Evans, Bunker, and Head are the best known)

A man holds a spoon full of gold leaf, ready to eat it with his sushi at the "Seven Sushi Samurai" Sushi of the Year awards 2009 at the Olympia exhibition center in west London, on November 14, 2009. The gold leaf was an ingredient in last year's winner Mitsunori Kusakabe's entry. (LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)

From an interesting set of 37 photos at Boston.com's The Big Picture, presenting gold objects and aspects of gold mining and processing.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

The 2008 Weblog Awards

Category: Best New Blog

Translate

Search TYWKIWDBI

About Me

I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Readers - especially old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, and long-lost relatives - are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net